


What comes at dawn

by heartablaze



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bit gorey, End of the World, F/M, Jily Trope Fest, Like seriously there's so many curse words in here, Not too bad but still pretty dark, Swearing, The Walking Dead AU, Zombie Apocaylpse, death mention, murder mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-18 00:17:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7291936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartablaze/pseuds/heartablaze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspector Potter wakes up in the middle of the Zombie Apocalypse. He doesn’t have his gun, doesn’t have a phone, and certainly doesn’t know what the hell is going on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What comes at dawn

**I**

Someone was following him. James could feel it; sometimes he swore he could see glimpses of them or hear feet pattering through his flat in the middle of the night. He hadn’t found enough evidence on it. He set up cameras in his flat and still nothing. There was only so much security the station could help him with when he had no evidence. It’s all in his head, the Commissioner told him.

“You should call the cops.” Sirius jokingly suggested at the pub one evening. “Honestly, mate. You’re not being followed. I think you’re just paranoid. I would be too, especially after what went down with him.” Sirius jutted his chin towards the TV behind the bar. A news report was showing footage of the outside of a courthouse played, the caption rolling at the bottom of the screen read, ‘ _Riddle sentence to serve a life sentence at HM Prison Wakefield for offences relating to organised crime and homicide’_. The news story had been on repeat all day since the news broke that afternoon.

“Don’t remind me,” James groaned as he paid the bartender for their beers.

“You just helped put the most dangerous criminal this city has ever seen behind bars, and you just want to forget about it?” Sirius asked with a smirk, clapping a hand on James’ shoulder. “I thought we were celebrating, not that I would have to bear witness to Inspector James Potter’s one man pity party. Forget about your stalker for a few hours—”

“Easy for you to say.”

“And have a drink.” Sirius continued, “We can find you a fit bird to snog, how does that sound?” 

James laughed loudly; turning a few surrounding heads towards him and Sirius. He took a large mouthful of his beer, setting it back down on the bar with a loud thud.

“You keep an eye out for that lovely bird for me.” James said. “I’m going for a piss.”

The men’s bathroom reeked of a mixture of smells James didn’t care to identify. He took a breath before opening the door and approaching the urinal, planning on being as quick as possible. A middle-aged man wearing a Liverpool shirt followed him in quickly, looking so pale that his skin looked grey. The other man headed straight to a cubicle, and James made a mental note not to try the pubs ‘ _Friday Curry Special’_. Once he was done, James hit the urinal flush lever and moved to wash his hands. When he looked up in the mirror, he saw the last thing he had been expecting. The man who followed him in was holding a gun to his back. James turned slowly, his hands up to show them empty. Mentally, he was planning on how he could get the gun off the man, or how he could show his badge without him thinking he was going for a weapon, anything to get him to lower it from where it pointed at his heart.

“Mate,” James said carefully. “Could you pop that down for me, just for a ‘mo?”

“I don’t have a choice.”

James strategizes the situation in his head, deciding he just needs to keep him talking long enough to disarm him. “What do you mean by that?”

“He gave me no choice. He’s going to kill my family.”

In a moment of sudden clarity, James dropped his hands. “When you say ‘ _he’_ , you mean Riddle. Don’t you?”

The man nodded once, and James’ blood froze in his veins. His eyes travelled from the barrel of the gun pointed at his chest, not close enough for James to reach but close enough to scare the shit out of him.

“You remind me of my young lad, and I am so sorry,” the man said, his voice shaking as badly as his arm. “May God forgive me for this.”

Then he pulled the trigger and put a bullet through James’ left clavicle, narrowly missing his heart. The bone shattered at such short range, and tore through major arteries before it lodged itself in James’ scapula. The scream that came from James’ mouth sounded so foreign, so far away, that he barely registered that it was his. The pain was all he could feel. The blood flowed through the material of his shirt like watercolour to paper. The gunman adjusted the weapon so it was sitting against his own temple. 

“No, don’t—” James tried to say, his right hand holding the hole in his clavicle as he fell to his knees, the room spinning and his vision blurring. “Please don’t do that—” he begged again, only it was too late. The gun went off again, and he collapsed in a heap on the filthy tiled floor. James lost consciousness only seconds later, seconds before the bathroom door banged opened and Sirius found his best friend in a pool of his own blood and a complete stranger’s brain decorating the bathroom wall.

**II**

Sirius tried to convince himself that it was just another normal day. He changed James’ fluids bag and shaved his face, everything the nurses used to do while they were still around. He sat on the edge of James’ bed with his back to his brother. He had asked the doctor when they first came in, whether or not James would be able to hear him. The doctor said that anything was possible.

Sirius had spoken to him at first, explaining the kinds of birds who came to visit him, the girls who came to cry. He joked and told him he was a selfish git, not sharing any of those fit girls with him earlier. Sirius told him what was in the news, what was going on around town, which team was winning the Premier League. He told him everything, until he didn’t tell him anything anymore. What do you tell your brother when the world had gone to shit and people were eating each other alive? He couldn’t burden James with that. So he just didn’t speak. He’d helped the nurses’ chain up the Emergency Department after the outbreak. Eventually, the doctors stopped coming in, the nurses stopped coming in, until Sirius was the only one around to take care of James. So he did what he had to.

“You lost so much blood,” Sirius told James’ sleeping form, covering his mouth with his hand as he closed is eyes and willed himself not to cry. “You have no idea what that was like, seeing you like that. I hate you for it y’know; hate you for being so fucking _noble_. I know you had your gun on your belt. You were carrying it because you were scared, weren’t you? You could have shot quicker than him, you could have bested him but you didn’t. I’ll never forgive you for that. Reg is dead too now. I’ve lost both my brothers and now I’m alone, again. And it’s all your fault, you fucking decent prick.” Sirius’ tears fell into his lap. “S’pose you’ll never forgive me for what I’m about to do either, and I guess that makes us even.”

The bag of fluids that hung from the drip stand was the very last one in the hospital. Sirius had checked every store on every level, in every ward. The rest had been raided or broken. Without those, there was nothing Sirius could do for him. Sirius placed the supplies he’d brought for James at the foot of his bed. It was Sirius’ worst fear that James would wake up to all this, but if by some miracle he did, Sirius didn’t want him going out there in a hospital gown and no shoes.

Sirius leant down to James and pressed their foreheads together tightly, sobbing as he begged his brother not to wake up. 

**III**

They were her family now, she told herself at night with a knife in her hand. Her eyes were closed but she didn’t sleep. They were her family now, and they’re all she’s got. She couldn’t lose them. She couldn’t afford to.

It’s almost three weeks since she found Moony and Wormtail raiding a service station for expired bags of crisps and water bottles. It’s almost two months since she found Mac with an axe in each hand skipping down a central city boulevard like she was heading to school, swinging at Wights’ necks whenever they got within three meters of her. It’s almost three months since she found Mead—or Mead found her, that line had grown a little blurry recently—putting her boot-clad foot through a Wights’ skull and fighting like she didn’t care what happened anymore. She had saved Mead’s life, put her one remaining bullet in her handgun, the one she’d been saving for herself, and then through the back of a Wights’ head. Mead grabbed her hand and said, “You’re with me now.”

Their home’s an abandoned farm on the outskirts of the city. The crops were all dead, but it had locking doors and windows, and they had yet to see any more than a few lone Wights’ wandering the forest behind the farm. All that still didn’t make her feel safe. She still jumped at the sound of every twig cracking. So when she was on watch and she heard a distinctly human grunt from the other side of the trees, she was on her feet and running towards it like a shot.  The moment the man emerged from the trees, she threw herself at him and knocked him to the ground. Using her knee on his sternum, she kept him pinned to the dirt.

He wasn’t a Wight, she knew that much immediately. He had too much colour and he didn’t reek of death. She still didn’t know if he was infected though. She put her knife to his jugular and pressed down.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t just fucking kill you.”

“Kill me.” he rasped, his voice hoarse as though he’d been screaming. “ _Please_. Please kill me.”

She faltered slightly, before demanding, “What?”

“You’d be doing me a favour.”

“Are you bitten?”

“ _No_. I just don’t want to live like this any more.”

That made her blood run hot, she leaned down and hissed, “Why the fuck do you get an easy out? What makes you so special?”

“I’m just so _tired_. I’m tired of letting people die and leaving people behind.” he choked on his words and it had yanked at the empathy she had tried so hard to hide since all of this began. He’d tried to grab her hand, to guide her knife into his neck for her but she pulled it back suddenly. In her mind, she had flashes of her sister, her brother-in-law, and her nephew. With her jaw clenched, she sheathed the knife before helping him to his feet.

Her hand was tight on his when she said, “We’re all tired, but if you waste that then you’re spitting in the face of chance that has kept you alive this far. We are a lot of things out of necessity, but ungrateful shouldn’t be one of them.” 

He stood uneasily on his feet and she finally got a good look at him. His shoulder length hair was ragged, bits of leaves and twigs caught in it. She imagined hers looked somewhat similar. He’s wearing a scarlet hoodie underneath a leather jacket. He carried no weapons other than the handgun in his pocket and the knife strapped to his thigh. His backpack looked like it was falling apart and didn’t look like he was carrying much at all.

“You got some place to go?”

“Hell, but I’m already there.” he told her. She couldn’t help but laugh at the bitterness. The noise sounded foreign to her and it seemed to startle him too.

She held out her hand to him in what felt like an archaic gesture. “I’m Evans. What do we call you?”

He took her hand. “Padfoot. You can call me Padfoot.”

“Well, Padfoot, welcome to purgatory.” 

**IV**

It took James a few moments before the world around him cleared. A white tiled ceiling. Cream coloured walls. A boarded-up window and the hospital bed he was occupying. He had a tube coming out of his nose, and one out of his arm attached to a drip bag. James scrambled at his hospital gown, yanking down the left side to inspect the damage, only to find a small scar the length of his thumb across his collarbone. Frowning, he reached up and grabbed hold of the call button; pressing the blue button for the nurse’s station. A moment passed and no one came. He pressed the button again, and still no one came. He had a wave of panic wash over him. He just  _knew_  something was wrong. He looked to the foot of his bed and saw that carefully placed there was a pile of clothes, a pair of shoes, and a backpack with a protein bar sticking out of the pocket. He turned his attention to the tubing. Gingerly, he pulled the tube out of his nose—swearing and scolding himself for not realising what it was initially—gagging as the feeding tube came up his throat and through his nose. He had to take three or four steady breaths in to calm himself, before he yanked the needles and tubes out of his arm. His whole body ached from disuse, and James started to wonder how long he’d been unconscious… a few days? A week? There was no way of telling, with no clock or television in his room. If he’d been paying more attention, which he hadn’t been, he would have noticed the layer of dust that coated the surfaces of the room.

When he opened the door to the hallway, he collided with a stretcher someone had placed across his doorway. James climbed over it and examined his surroundings, and what he saw was not the halls of a functional hospital, but of a crime scene. Blood spattered the walls, stretchers and beds were overturned, and bodies lay discarded to the sides. Only they weren’t just bodies, the flesh was torn and jagged, as though teeth had torn through the tissue. A low growling noise shook James from his panic, and instead filled him with fear. He turned towards the source and found what looked to be the double door entry into the Emergency Department at the end of the hall. The doors were moving back and forth slowly, like they were breathing. Across both doors, a thick, silver metal chain kept them closed. Words were painted onto the wood, “RUN. DON’T OPEN. THE DEAD ARE HERE.” The paint, at first, looked black from the distance, but as James got closer, his horrible suspicion was confirmed.

It wasn’t paint. It was blood. Thick, dark red blood dragged across the door with fingertips. 

His heart was slamming against his ribcage, adrenaline coursing through every inch of his body.  A screeching roar came from behind the doors once he was within ten feet, and the sheer sound made James stumble backwards in surprise. Only it wasn’t just the roar that startled him, but the face that appeared in the gap between the doors. A face made of thick, grey skin and sunken eyes and lips curled so far back that James could count each and every tooth. It didn’t stare at him with interest, or fear, but in fury. James knew, somehow he just knew, that the face was not human, not anymore. Its hands were on the edge of either door, trying to pry it open.

James took the doors advice. He ran for his life. 

**V**

James was lucky—he made it out of the hospital without seeing another one. Part of him had naïvely hoped that the carnage inside was the worst of it. It was only once he was outside that he realised it was far worse than he could have thought, far worse than his imagination would have ever stretched. Cars were overturned and burnt out in the middle of the street. The remains of charred bodies littered the roadside, money scattered in the wind, rubbish everywhere. It was a scene from a horror movie, he was certain of it. He turned around, looking up at the hospital. He spotted another message, the same bloody scrawl against the whitewashed walls that read, “THEY’RE COMING.”  All too suddenly, James had a gut wrenching feeling that whoever wrote the message that saved his life might not have made it themselves. 

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Dread filled him, and he whipped around like a shot. A man was there when he turned around, and James was certain he hadn’t been there before. A man dressed in a ragged suit with a name sticker that read, “ _Hello, My name is Nick!_ ” His jaw was hanging open as though it were broken. James could see bits of meat lodged in the cavities of his teeth. 

“You alright, mate?” James whispered as his blood stilled in his veins, taking a slow step back from him. A hand clawed at him, grabbing hold of his shirt and yanking him closer. James kicked, and swung against the man, his hand travelling for the gun in his pocket. Only another moment and its teeth would have sunk into James’ neck. Two things happened very quickly: the first was that the man was dragged backwards, and the second was that the head occupying the top of his neck disappeared. An axe came down hard and separated the head from the body. All James could see was a small, redheaded woman standing behind the still standing man. She wore a grey shirt and black jeans, and a surgical mask that was now covered in blood. She also had a knife strapped to her thigh in a holster. She held the head briefly by the hair before dropping it to the ground, kicking the body over with a boot-clad foot. Behind the woman was a fading Royal Mail post van with the engine running. Its colour was fading but the lettering and the stripes still stood out enough for him to recognize what it once had been.

“Who the _fuck_ are you?” he asked, before noticing that his white shirt was splattered with blood, and the reality of what he’d just witnessed sunk in. 

“Oh god— _fuck_ —you killed him! He’s… what the _fuck_ is the matter with you, man? Oh my _god_!” 

She stared at him for a moment before her eyes narrowed. She yanked the surgical mask down and James knew instantly that she was furious. She lifted the weapon slung across her back – it was a gun about as long as she was tall. She was holding it up like it weighed nothing and pointing it right at his chest.

“Who the fuck are _you_?” she snapped aggressively. “What are you playing at? Is this a fucking _game_ to you?”

James couldn’t believe that the first person he saw in this nightmare was so completely mental. He also couldn’t believe that he had another fucking gun pointed at his chest. “What are you talking about?”

Her attention moved from James to the building he had just come out of. The signage above the door read ‘ST AGNES’ HOSPITAL’. He almost didn’t hear her when she whispered, “ _Fuck_.” But he could see her figuring something out. His blood stilled, and he wondered if his legs would ever move again. She knew something he didn’t.

“You got some place to go?”

“How long has it been like this?” he asked in a shaky voice as he looked around the ruined street, hoping that any minute he might wake up and see a nurse leaning over him to take his blood pressure instead of the apocalypse.

“About four months.”

“Evans!” the driver shouted from the Royal Mail van. “We’ve got incoming!”

James and the redhead—Evans—looked down the road to where the van was facing. The girl behind the driver’s seat wasn’t wrong, what looked like a wall of people, or not people, was closing in on them.

“Get in the car!” Evans shouted, pushing him towards the fading red van. He stumbled over his feet but grabbed hold of the handle for the sliding panel door, yanking it open.

She pulled a bottle out of the side pocket of her backpack and poured the contents over the headless body. It was obvious from the smell that the fluid was fuel, and he already knew what she was planning on doing. She climbed into the back of the van with him, and at the last minute, she pulled a match from her pocket, leant down and dragged it across the asphalt, igniting it before tossing it onto the body. James watched in horror as the man on the pavement went up in flames.

Evans slammed the van’s door shut behind her, and the car took off around the corner.

**VI**

The front windscreen of the Royal Mail van was lined with a sheet of cross-linked fence wire, as were the windows. The longer James assessed the van, the more he realised it had been fitted for survival and function, not aesthetics. The interior of the van looked vaguely like a station weaponry, just as deadly, only on a much smaller, much more portable scale. The walls were lined with pegboards made of steel, with hooks to neatly and securely hang each of the weapons from.  On one side of the van hung an array of gardening and household tools that he was sure were chosen to either cause blunt force trauma or decapitate; a chainsaw, a number of axes, shovels, crowbars, hammers, a pipe wrench, a meat cleaver and an ice axe. On the other wall of the van were guns of all calibre and model; two identical .45 auto handguns hung side by side, an old looking but well maintained Colt Python, a stubby looking Beretta he can’t say he’d ever seen before, a Colt M16, an AR-18 and a—

“Where the fuck did you get a Remington from?” he interrupted Evans and the driver’s conversation about him. He knew it was about him, because he kept hearing Evans say, ‘ _Can you fucking imagine waking up to this?’_  and  _‘Fuck, the poor bastard.’_

Evans turned around from the passengers seat. Proudly, she said, “We raided a police station.”

In a strange moment of defensiveness, James said, “Then it doesn’t belong to you.”

He heard Evans sigh in exasperation and the driver stifle a laugh, before she climbed over the back of her seat to drop down next to him, “Columbus, you need to understand that the Monarchy is gone, and our Anarchy took its place. There are no more parliaments, no more laws, no more police, and no more right and wrong. There’s only life and death, and killing Wights’.”

“That thing, the one whose head you—?”

“Yes. That was a Wight. And yes, it would have  _eaten_  you.”

James fell silent. His head had started to spin and the van felt like it had floated out from underneath him. He’d finally lost his bearings. Everything he had known, everything he had believed in was now irrelevant. Reaching up, he gripped the back of the passengers seat to steady himself. Evans placed a hand on his shoulder,

“I can’t imagine what you’re going through, and I’m so sorry, but this is the way things are now.”

There was a tense silence, her hand still firmly on his shoulder as he tried to get a grip on what she was saying, what he had been denying himself since he walked out of the hospital. Everything had changed, and there was no going back. The Monarchy was dead. So was his family.

“You say you need guns?” James asked in a small voice. He placed his elbows on his knees and put his head between his knees to stop the bile from his stomach and part of a protein bar from resurfacing.

“It’s not so much the guns as it is the bullets we need.”

“Turn around.”

“What?” the driver asked incredulously. “Do you have a death wish?”

“You want bullets? I can get you bullets.”

Evans and the driver—James was sure that he heard Evans call her Mac—exchanged a look. “Where am I driving to?” Mac asked as she slowed down, doing a U-turn and speeding the van up once again.

“Scotland Yard.” 

The New Scotland Yard housed one of the largest weaponries in London. James figured that if Evans and Mac had raided just any station, that others might have had the same idea. Only the Yard wasn’t just any station. The Yard wouldn’t be that easy to just break in and raid. The weaponry room was behind two coded doors. Mac drove back through the city quickly, dodging groups of Wights and even hitting a few with the van intentionally. She laughed at the noise they made when they hit the bonnet and James almost threw up. When they finally arrived, James reached for the handle to yank the sliding door panel open, but Evans put a hand on his arm to stop him. There was something completely terrifying and yet comforting about her, so James didn’t argue when she stopped him from opening the door.

“Mac stays in the van,” she said. “Keep her running, and get ready to floor it.”

Mac made a sound of protest, but Evans shot her a pleading look.

“He comes with me, we get these bullets and get the fuck out of there, deal?” Evans reached over to the steel pegboard and handed him one of the .45 handguns, “Do you know how to use this?”

James nodded once. He would have laughed at the absurdity of the question, if there were anything funny about the situation at all.

She pointed to the other sheeted wall, “Take something else as well. We use guns as a last resort. The sound attracts more Wights’, so if you can kill one by taking off the head of even just smashing the skull in, it’s preferable to shooting it.”

He grabbed the closest thing to him—an ice axe—and reached for the door again, only this time she didn’t stop him. He checked both sides of the street before climbing out of the van. Tucking the gun into his belt, he held the axe between both hands. He heard the van door shut from behind him, and then felt Evans appear next to him as her shoulder brushed his.

“You’ve gotta show me where we’re going. I’m guessing you used to work here, or were you just a really bad felon?”

He kept watching his surroundings in his peripherals, leading her toward the building. “The former, I guess.” The glass-fronted windows were helpful in that there were at least no Wights’ that he could see in the lobby.

“You guess?”

“I got shot. Guess everyone thought I was going to die. Not sure how long they keep you on the payroll when they think you’re either going to kick it or become a vegetable.” 

“You did neither, so you showed them.”

“Yeah,” he said sarcastically, “I really showed them…Waking up in hell is so much better.”

“We prefer to call it purgatory.”

James led her down the side staircase; she covered the rear and he covered the front. James drove his axe right through the skull of a confused Wight lingering at the bottom of the staircase, as though it couldn’t figure out how to open the door or get back up the stairs. It had been thin, its skin hanging on its wasted bones, and James had driven an axe right through its brain. All the while, all he could think about was the Liverpool gunman’s blood and brain on the stall door and bathroom wall, how the gunman’s son never saw his old dad again, and it was James’ fault for not leaving the Riddle case alone. He leant on the wall and threw up mostly bile, and when he straightened up he felt as though a huge weight had been lifted from his chest, that the pressure had been relieved temporarily.

“The first one is always the hardest,” Evans told him, her hand settling warmly on his shoulder. She seemed to have a habit of doing that, perhaps to comfort him, he noticed. James wondered if she saw him as some wounded animal that needed support through this. He didn’t want to tell her that the Wight wasn’t his first kill.

He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and shouldered the door open to reveal the basement. He reached for the light switch and moments later the fluorescent lights revealed between ten and fifteen Wights’ running towards them.

They said no more. They lifted their axes and started swinging. The heads on some came off cleanly; on others it was enough to just crack the skull before the thing went down. When they got too close James used his foot to shove them away, before having another swing at their neck.  Before long, the only remaining Wight had cornered Evans without either of her weapons, and she was calling for James.

“Columbus! A little help!” she yelled as it approached her with hungry eyes and outstretched arms.

James did the only thing he could think of, grabbing his gun from his belt as he shouted, “Oi!” The Wight turned around at the sound of his yell, its mouth hanging open, clearly broken at the hinges. James took the opportunity he was presented with. He shoved the barrel of the handgun into its mouth and pushed it away from Evans. He pulled the trigger and looked away, shielding himself from the spray but also not having the stomach to watch. He pulled the gun out and wiped it on his trousers as the Wight fell to the ground.

“Grab your shit,” James told Evans. “It’s just over there.”

Evans had paled considerably, but she nodded and grabbed her gun and axe from the ground. James made his way to the first door. The keypad panel to the right was covered with a layer of dust, and he wondered how long it had been since any of his team had been down here. He pressed the code, and then ‘enter’, and the familiar grinding noise of the door unlocking started. When it opened fully, a message was written in black marker on the next door: 

‘ _My fellow brothers and sisters,_

_The world has ended. Our world has ended and a new world has taken its place. These weapons belong to you now. Keep yourselves safe, keep your families safe, and keep those who you meet along the way safe. Do your duty from this life in your new one._

_\- Alastor._ ’

“Mad-Eye…” James said, his fingers tracing the letters on the door.

“Who was he?” Evans asked as she read the message. The word ‘was’ stung him, and he visibly flinched at the sound of it. She either didn’t notice or ignored it, either way he was grateful she didn’t comment.

“The Commissioner.” James explained as he reached for the second keypad panel. Once again, he entered the code and the door began to unlock itself. The room had been half emptied already, but in the shelving was a large number of packets of bullets. In silence, James opened his backpack and threw in as many as he could fit of all diameters. Evans did the same; she also took a few handguns from the shelves and tossed him a Remington rifle that looked similar to hers in the van. He used the strap to hang it over his shoulder before picking up his axe again.

He looked around the room that both flooded him with memories of his dead co-workers and fear for this new world, and said, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

**VII**

The rest of the drive involved Evans and Mac explaining to James what had happened.

The outbreak had started back in March, she told him. At first it was just flu symptoms, coughing, sneezing, lethargy. Then it mutated into something else. People became aggressive and closed off. Hospital admissions and police reports of acts of violence skyrocketed, and those who were attacked appeared to contract some kind of systemic infection.

Lily kept her back to him as she spoke. “It didn’t happen like all the movies said it would. It was slow, just another virus like H1N1… until they started dying. The more of them that died, the faster it spread. Death wasn’t death anymore, it was a rebirth. The virus killed them, and then it brought them back. My sister got it, and I thought it was just the flu until she died. Funny how we only believe what we want to believe.

Her husband took their son and ran. She turned eventually, and I was the only one to put the crowbar through her skull. Never been so thankful for the pneumonia that killed my mother and the traffic collision that threw my father through his windscreen. Probably would have killed them to see what her and I had become. They never would have forgiven me.”

“Do you forgive yourself?”

There was something in her eyes that changed, and James knew the moment of honesty was over. “I stopped needing forgiveness a long time ago.” 

“We’ve all done things we didn’t want to do,” Mac said. “Things we’ll never forgive ourselves for. One of our own had to leave his own brother to die because there was nothing he could do to help.”

“Understandable.” James said in a small voice that made Evans turn over her shoulder and look at him.  

“Try telling him that.”

“You’re a strange bloke, you know that, Columbus?” said Evans.  


“Why do you keep calling me that?” James asked. It seemed more important at that moment than ‘how’ and ‘why’ the world had ended.

Mac chose to explain. “Our mate, the one whose brother died, said that he wouldn’t wish waking up to all this and have no idea what had happened on anyone. Evans joked that it would be like discovering a new world, a new life with more weapons and blood.”

James seemed to finally catch on, running a hand through his wild hair as he asked, “Like Christopher Columbus?”

“Like Christopher Columbus,” Evans repeated with a nod, smirking slightly.

“Alright,” he said with a small smile. “You can probably call me Potter, if you like.”

It wasn’t long before they were pulling into a long graveled drive way. James looked out the front windscreen. Through the cross-linked fencing that covered the glass, he saw a small farmhouse. They drove past a sign that said, ‘ _Welcome to Purgatory’_.

“You call the house ‘Purgatory’?” James asked them.

Mac laughed and Evans grinned. “Not so much the house as our existence.”

“Bit bleak, don’t you think?”

“A bit.”

James didn’t say anything more. A few people were standing on the porch outside the house, and James suddenly felt nervous. Of the group there were three, a woman and two men. The woman was tall with dark skin, and carried a gun on a strap over her shoulder. She wore deep green trousers, a heavy pair of boots like Evans’, and a black shirt. The tallest of the men had sandy hair and a scarred face. He wore a knitted jumper and a pair of jeans. The last man was short and stumpy, with blonde hair and a nervous face. Mac killed the engine as the van pulled up in front of them. 

“Are these your people?” James asked Evans.

“We take people in all the time,” she told him. In her signature move, she placed her hand on his shoulder. “You’ve nothing to worry about.”

Evans pulled open the panel door and jumped out. She and Mac greeted their friends fondly, asking for news from their absence. The short man asked about the city, the scarred man asked about the supplies, and the woman bluntly asked ‘Who is that?’ as she stared at James.

James had been lingering in the van, not wanting to interrupt the reunion. But at the mention of his presence, he climbed out.

“That’s Potter.”

“Potter?”

“It was either that or Columbus, apparently,” James said as he stood in front of the woman, offering her his hand.

“Mead,” the woman said, taking hold of his hand and shaking it. She gave him a polite smile but it didn’t reach her eyes. She motioned to the men beside her. “This is Moony and Wormtail. Where did you find him?” This last question was directed to Evans, who smirked.

Leaning against the side of the van, she said, “Outside St Agnes, trying to make nice with a Wight—”

“James?” 

James’ heart stopped. He knew that voice. He would know it anywhere.

He looked up to the open front door to see his brother.

“Sirius.” James said weakly, his body going numb. Sirius had taken four steps before he reached James. Sirius caught James just before his legs gave way, their arms tight around each other. The sound of soft sobs were indistinguishable between the two, it was hard to say who was crying and who was saying, ‘ _I’m sorry, I’m so sorry’_.

Mead’s hard expression softened at the sight of the reunion. “He stays for dinner, we figure out what to do after we eat.” was all she said before she and the others went inside, leaving Sirius and James alone.

“I thought you were dead,” Sirius choked out, gripping the back of James’ shirt in handfuls. “How did you wake up? I asked you not to fucking wake up.” James’s shoulder was wet, but he hardly noticed nor cared. He was certain that Sirius’ would be much the same.

“You know me. I refuse to do anything you tell me.” James laughed between small sobs. “Did you put that stretcher in front of my door?”

Sirius nodded.

“The notes on the wall? The ones in blood.”

Sirius nodded again.

“The protein bar?”

“That was just because you’ve always been a _scrawny fuck_.” Sirius choked out with a laugh. It was another few minutes before they let go of each other, and James couldn’t find the words to express how relieved he was to see Sirius alive.

“What happened?” James asked.

“You died and the world ended.” 

**VIII**

After dinner, Mead asked James to wait out the front of the house while they discussed the situation. Sirius had retaliated quickly, saying that there was to be no discussion, it was black and white: James would stay with them, or Sirius would leave. The argument had started in the kitchen from then, and James had happily backed away from it. He found a seat in the garden in an old wicker chair, the handgun that Evans had given him sitting in his lap. He heard a branch snap and he picked up the gun and pointed it in the direction of the noise, only to see Moony walking towards him. 

Moony stopped and put his hands in the air. “Just me.” he told him with a sheepish smile when James lowered the gun. “Glad you’re not a ‘ _shoot first, ask questions later_ ’ kind of cop.”

“How did you know I was a—?”

“Padfoot might have mentioned it.”

James laughed at the use of Sirius’ old nickname. “Is that what he told you to call him?” Moony nodded and James’ laugh grew. “I called him that when we were kids, he used to sneak out to go to the pub and my mum would always catch him coming back in, because he’s got feet like lead. Started calling him Padfoot out of irony and it stuck.” 

Moony laughed at that, sitting down in the chair beside James. “My real name is Remus.” he explained to James. “I used to write. Journals and news stories, things like that. But I also worked at the pub near my house for extra money. People at the paper found out, I guess. They started calling me Moonlighter, then just Moony.” he finished with a fond smile. 

“Thought this lot didn’t use real names?” James asked.

Remus shrugged. “You can’t hide everything forever. I don’t want to die and have none of you know who I really am.”

“You’re not going to die.” 

“Not yet, maybe.”

The shouting from the house grew louder and James couldn’t help but flinch. They were arguing about him after all. He could hear them loud and clear, he could distinguish Sirius’ voice from Evans’ and Mead’s, and he could hear that the case for him staying wasn’t going well so far.

“Do they always argue like this?” James asked Remus, who gave a non-committal shrug.

“Mead and Evans had this same argument when we found Padfoot, and I assume when they found Wormtail and me too. I wouldn’t panic, she’ll see reason.”

James turned his head to look back at the house, the row wrenching more of his attention now from the unpolluted sky. It was Mead’s abrasive voice he heard first: “You go into the city for supplies, and you bring back another fucking mouth to feed? What is with you and bringing in strays?”

“A stray that saved my life!” Evans interrupted angrily.

“And that is supposed to make me trust him? This is our home and you want me to let you invite as many strangers into it as you can?”

Sirius cut in sharply, “He’s my fucking brother, Mead!”

“We were all strangers at some point, you can’t use that as an excuse to throw him out in the cold,” Evans argued.

“I’m sorry, but the fact that he saved your life isn’t enough for me, Evans.”

“Oh yeah? So why was it enough when I saved yours?” Evans snapped back at her. “Is your life worth more than mine, Mead?”

“It’s just not enough to put us all at risk! It was one thing when I was on my own, but we have other people to consider now.”

“What did Riddle do to your family, Mead?” Sirius asked, interrupting Mead’s tirade. It was clear in his voice that he’d had enough of being ignored.

“What has that got to do with anything?” Mead snapped at him.

“No, tell me what he did.”

“My nineteen year old brother got caught up in dealing drugs for Riddle, okay? He’d been dealing the shit for years, and when we finally got him out, the cops said they could give him a lesser sentence if he testified against Riddle. We moved him back home where he’d be safe, where he’d be away from it all and away from Riddle. I was at work one night, and while I was out Riddle murdered my younger brother in his bed by slitting his throat from ear-to-ear. Then he stabbed my parents in the chest, one for every year of my brother’s life he stole. He let them all die scared and alone.”

“James put Riddle in prison,” Sirius put down. “You remember that relief, when you saw that he’d finally been put away for all the shit he’d put you through? My brother was the reason you celebrated. He and I went out for drinks that night and James was shot in the chest in the middle of the men’s room, and I thought I’d lost him forever.”

“Fat lot of good your brother did putting him away. Riddle caused all of this.”

Sirius finally snapped and said, “What if your little brother walked through that door right now, Mead? What if I told you he couldn’t stay because I didn’t trust him and never would? What would you do to me?”

“I’d kill you where you stood,” Mead told him, honesty dripping from her voice.

“Then you can understand why I’m telling you that James is staying here with us, and why that decision is final.“

**IX**

James sat on the thatched roof of the farmhouse, the reeds itching his arse. He’d climbed out of the upstairs window to get away from the tension inside. Days had passed since he’d arrived with Mac and Evans, and still Mead pretended as though he weren’t there. He didn’t blame her though, he was what he was: an outsider. Sirius spoke often of the two of them leaving, maybe taking Moony and Wormtail with them and leaving the others to fend for themselves. James had given a non-committal shrug and said they would probably struggle to get by without Evans at the very least. On some level James admitted to himself that he couldn’t get through a day without Evans, but he wouldn’t admit that to Sirius—or to Evans, for that matter. As though she heard him thinking about her, she appeared in the window behind him.

“Oi,” she said, climbing out of the window to sit beside him. “It’s my turn on watch and you’re in my seat.”

James shuffled over to make room for her, and she settled herself so close that their shoulders touched. James felt his heart stutter in his chest. He had spent days wondering if his admiration for Evans was simply because she saved his life and gave him a place to stay, gave him back his brother—or if it was something else completely. The air was unusually cold against the exposed skin of his hands and face, and he kept his arms folded across his chest to keep himself warm. From the light of the house, they could see the dawn’s fog settling on the expanse of grass surrounding the house.

“Where are the others?” James asked, noticing that there was little noise coming from inside the house.

“Padfoot is making bread for breakfast, Mac was asleep last I saw her, and Wormtail was patrolling the back fence. I’m not sure about Mead and Moony.”

“You don’t think they’re…?”

“I doubt it. Seems like it’s the last thing on either of their minds.”

Evans had placed her rifle down next to her, leaning back on her hands as she surveyed the land before them. She wore a small smile, and James realised for the first time that this was their home, and he was invading it.

His mouth moved before his brain consented. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

“You saved my life.”

“Not really a question, Potter.” 

“No, but you didn’t have to. You must have told Mac to stop the van to let you out. You could have kept driving and forgotten all about me by the time you hit the highway. But you didn’t. Either saved my life because you’re more concerned about peoples lives than you lead on, or you’re a psychopath who cuts Wights’ heads off and sets them on fire for fun.”

“Why not both?” She asked with a mischievous grin, “What’s your question?”

“What’s your real name? You saved my life and I saved yours. It’s only fair we know each others names.”

“It’s Lily,” she said without hesitation, giving him a small smile, “Lily Evans.”

He smiled back, “Lily suits you.”

“I think Columbus suited you better than James.”

James rolled his eyes, laughing at her remark. The moment didn’t last long as he remembered something that Mead had said the night he arrived. He turned so he was facing her, instead of the farm, “What did Mead mean when she said that Riddle was the cause of all this?”

 “You heard that, huh?” She looked amused. “It’s just a conspiracy theory.”

“She thinks what, exactly? That Riddle somehow started the Zombie Apocalypse?”

“It’s not really the end of the world, just the end of humanity and the life we all knew.”

“Stop doing that.”

“Doing what?”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

She smirked, before sighing and finally answering, “Yes, that’s what she thinks. She thinks that before they could take him to prison, he set plans in motion to release the virus. But like I said, it’s just a theory.”

“Do you believe it?”

“I…” she started, before taking a moment to think about the right way to put it. “I do, but only because I have to have someone to blame this on. If I didn’t, I would just… I wouldn’t get through each day, y’know?”

James’ stomach churned at the idea that Riddle’s arrest was what caused all of this. That James was somehow responsible for the spread of the infection, that ultimately, James was to blame. In the distance, James could hear a rumbling noise. He looked up at the sky, wondering if it was a storm front. Finding no clouds, James looked around him. A screeching noise came next.

“What the fuck is that noise?” James asked, turning away from Evans to look towards the forest that ran the length of the farm’s east boundary. Evans stood up, focusing her eyes on the source of the sound.

It was Wormtail running out of the forest. And he was screaming.

**X**

“He needs to shut the fuck up, or he may as well send out an invitation for tea to all the Wights in a five kilometre radius,” Evans said. 

“Too late,” said James, his throat going dry. His attention wasn’t on Wormtail, but on what followed him out of the darkness of the forest: dozens and dozens of Wights’ running—no,  _sprinting_ —after him. The rumbling noise grew as they got closer. 

James grabbed hold of Evans’ hand and yanked her through the window they had come out of. They shot down the stairs, and in strange absence of Evans’ normal calm and authoritative demeanour, James took over. His yelling woke Mead from her slumber on the couch, Mac stood in the doorway of the kitchen with Sirius behind her. He told them to grab anything they could get their hands on immediately, and nothing more.

“Get into the fucking van,” he told them. Mac was going to argue that they could take a few Wights, but the paled look on Evans’ face told her all she needed to know—they weren’t dealing with ‘a few’. Evans had somehow gripped James’ hand in the commotion, and his knuckles had turned white. She was cutting off his circulation, but neither of them seemed to notice. They made a run for the van when they heard the sound of glass smashing—they were coming in through the windows. Once they were outside, Mead grabbed hold of Moony’s arm as they ran. There was no time to explain, but he had the sense to start running with them.

“Wait!” Mac yelled, “What about Wormtail?”

No one wanted to say it. No one wanted to even think it.

“Can you still hear him screaming?” James asked.

“No, but that doesn’t mean he’s…” Mead was already running back towards the house.

James had never seen anything or anyone so determined.  He was scared out of his mind. Mac was screaming for her to come back, but Mead just lifted the crowbar she had in hand and swung her way through the crowd of Wights’, calling for Wormtail.

Soon she wasn’t screaming for him, but for help instead.

James wasn’t sure what he was hearing any more — Sirius’ yells or Mead’s pleas. All he could hear was the drumming of his heartbeat in his ears. Lily’s nails were digging into the back of his hand. Blood seeped down his fingers. He wanted to go back to the hospital. He wanted to start again, to try again, and to not have it end like this.

Sirius grabbed a hold of James’ shoulders. “Do you trust me?"

James, as he would later realise, had gone into shock. All he could manage was a nod. Sirius pushed him roughly into the back of the van, pushing Evans with him and banging the doors shut.

Evans yelled, slamming her fists against the door, “We can’t leave them! Pad, we can’t leave them!”

The van started up a few seconds later with the familiar rumble of the engine, and Sirius hit the gas.

James sat silently as Evans slammed her shoulder against the door. She gave up eventually. They drove for what felt like hours. The van was silent. Mac and Moony were in the front next to Sirius, and James and Evans were sitting opposite each other in the back. Evans’ eyes were vacant as she stared at the floor.

Until, that is, something in her snapped.

“Pull this fucking thing over!” she screamed, hitting the panel door with her open palm. Sirius slammed on the brakes and unlocked the doors. Evans opened the door before the van had even come to a stop. She jumped out and strode towards the shoulder of the road. Both her hands grabbed at her head, and she started to yell at the sky.  _Fuck you_ , she told God at the top of her lungs,  _fuck you and everything you’ve done to us._  Birds flew from their perches at the sound of her screams.

James stumbled out of the van after her. He held her by the shoulders. 

“Shut up,” said James firmly, but gently, noticing the furious tears falling down her cheeks. “You want them to follow us too? Shut up.” He cupped her face, trying to calm her down. He was the furthest thing from calm himself, but she was two seconds away from charging back to the farm to kill each and every last Wight with her bare hands or die trying. James couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t.  

“Wormtail killed her. He brought them to us. I’m going to kill him,” she managed to say, her voice hoarse and cracked through her gritted teeth.

“He’s already dead.”

“I’m going to go back there and kill him again.”

“We are not going back there, Lily.”  

The intensity in her stare made James shiver. She clutched the front of his shirt and pulled him down to her. “We?” Though her gaze was strong, her voice was weak. She was scared and desperate, and for the first time since he met her outside of the hospital, he could understand her.

James put his hand on the back of her neck and pulled her roughly towards him, until her head was buried into his chest. He could feel her trembling as he held her close, half expecting her to pull the knife from its sheath on her thigh and hold it to his neck. Only she didn’t. Instead she wrapped her arms around him and clung to his jacket like it was the only thing keeping her standing. 

“Just because you lost Mead… That doesn’t mean you’re alone. You’ll never be alone, you hear me?”

“You can’t promise that.”

He smiled softly at her, leaning his forehead down to press against hers. “Just you watch me.” 

 


End file.
